This invention relates to service management techniques for carrying out the measurement, calculation and evaluation of the quality of services on the basis of a service level agreement concluded between a communication service user and a communication service provider.
As the utilization of local area networks and electronic commerce have become popular in recent years, the data flowing on the networks have been put to practical use as they are in business. Under such circumstances, new problems have arisen in addition to a stoppage of and a delay in the operations of the networks which constitute the problems of the related art techniques of this kind. The new problems include a decrease in the quality of services supplied onto the networks, which causes the degree of a satisfaction in the network services of a user (which will hereinafter be referred to simply as “user”) to decrease, and which possibly causes a working loss to occur. When the quality of the services decreases, a provider supplying network services (who will hereinafter be referred to simply as “provider”) loses his customers, and suffers a decrease in the equipment efficiency in some cases. Therefore, it has become insufficient for a provider to merely carry out specialized management, which he has heretofore practiced, of the networks, infrastructures. Namely, it has become important to measure and evaluate the performance of the services supplied to a user, and maintain the quality of the services.
The techniques for meeting such requirements include a method of carrying out MIB (Management Information Base) type collection of traffic on network connection by utilizing SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) disclosed in “Service Quality Display for Computer Networks” of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 205427/1997, and expressing the condition of fluctuation of the traffic by color and thickness of lines on a network construction diagram. Also, a method is known of measuring various kinds of quality data (delay time, packet loss rate and average band width) concerning point-to-point network connection by utilizing a passive probe disclosed in “Method of and Apparatus for Measuring Service Quality” of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 261254/1997.
The details of SNMP and MIB are given in RFC (Request for Comment) 1157 and RFC 1213 respectively.
A user has become able to selectively utilize a variety of service qualities in addition to the existing best effort type internet services and private line services in which only fixed band width assurance is given. Consequently, the following modes of services have become important. Namely, it has become important that a provider measures service qualities on the basis of what have been agreed upon in advance by users and the provider concerning how to maintain the service qualities, and supplies services in conformity with the contents of the agreement.
The following techniques are disclosed in “User Relieving Method and System” of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 244973/1997 as techniques for dealing with the above-mentioned matter. Namely, in these techniques, the degree of satisfaction concerning a service level agreement, of users who are influenced by the occurrence of troubles, is expressed in terms of a satisfaction percentage by comparing the measurement data obtained by a network monitoring operation with the contents of a service level agreement. Limitations of the utilization of services are then placed on users of a high degree of satisfaction, i.e. users having a satisfaction percentage in excess of 100%, and users of a low degree of satisfaction concerning the service level agreement, i.e. users having a satisfaction percentage of lower than 100% are relieved. These techniques constitute a method of maintaining the service quality without spending money on the duplication of equipment.